I Got Tired of Complaining, So I Did Something About It

For the past year or so, I've been quietly learning a ton about AI, using it all over my life and mostly learning the hard way: where it helps, where it doesn't, and when to trust what it tells me versus when to push back. It's taken me a long time to get a handle on it, and I'm still learning.

I also get so annoyed at how AI has been shoved into everything we touch. The companies behind it are spending fortunes to win some arms race while spending almost nothing teaching ordinary people how to use any of it. All I see are ads hyping the next greatest feature of AI, which seem aimed at those already in the know. This leaves the vast majority of us out of it as spectators, watching from the sidelines, all while the world changes around us at an impossibly fast pace.

"Yes, but what does it DO? How do I USE it? WHY would I use it? How can it help me?" These are questions I posed all the time to my partner who works in tech, and he would have answers for me, sure. But he agreed that there was near zero guidance for the average person. In the race for dollars and venture capital, there's apparently no resources to "waste" on consumer education.

I'm tired of just complaining about it. I've spent my career in adult education, so this is squarely in my lane. I decided to use what I know and do something about it myself.

I'm not an expert at AI — I'm still figuring this out, and that's kind of the point. One thing years of teaching has taught me: you don't have to know absolutely everything about something to teach it well. And "I don't know, but I'll find out the answer" is often the most effective approach.

So here's where it landed: Figuring Out AI with Steve. We didn't ask for AI to show up everywhere — but here it is, so let's figure it out anyway.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/@FiguringOutAI